“Don’t tell me what to do.” She nudged her horse and the mare followed Kaldar. William rode next to her. He was looking intently at her face. Cerise looked back.
The problem with Lord Bill was that not only was he hotter than July in hell, but he existed blissfully unaware of his hotness, which, of course, made him even more attractive. Looking at him for too long was bad for her. He was a challenge, and she had so many other things to worry about: her parents, the feud, the rest of the family . . .
“Are you upset?” he asked.
“Yes.”
“With me?”
“No.”
The rigid line of his jaw eased a little. “Then with what?”
Cerise glanced at the sky, gathering her thoughts. “I realized that I’m a child.”
William looked point-blank at her chest. “No.”
Laughter bubbled up and she couldn’t hold it in. “Up here, Lord Bill.” She pointed to her face. “It’s not polite to stare at a woman’s breasts, unless of course, she is naked in bed with you. Then you can look all you want.”
Amber flashed in William’s eyes, betraying intense, unfiltered lust. And then it was gone.
Oh, Lord Bill, you devious thing you. Everything he thought registered on his face. His wife would have no guesswork. If he was sad, she’d know. If he wanted sex, she’d know. If he wanted another woman, she’d know, too. He wasn’t capable of lying, even if he wanted to.
“Why do you think you’re a child?” he asked.
“Because I want my mother,” Cerise told him. She was probably foolish for letting him see that deep inside herself, but then she couldn’t exactly share any of it with the family. “I never knew until now that I was spoiled. My parents shielded me from the really important decisions. They made things easy. As long as I did as instructed, and even if I didn’t always, things would be okay, because they would always be there to fix it or at least to tell me how to fix it. I complained and thought I had it rough. Now they’re gone. All of the decisions are mine now, and all of the responsibility is mine, too. Tomorrow I’ll be sending my family into slaughter to take back my grandfather’s house. Some of them won’t come back. And all I want is for my parents to tell me I’m doing the right thing, except they can’t. It’s up to me to know what the right thing is. I feel like I’m taking a test and somebody just stole my cheat sheet. I have to pack a few years of growing up between tonight and tomorrow morning, and I better do it fast.”
There. More than he’d bargained for, she had no doubt.
“It’s like being a sergeant,” William said. “At first you’re an enlisted man, a rank-and-file Legionnaire. As long as you’re where you’re told to be when you’re told to be there, you can do no wrong. And then you make a sergeant. Now you have to figure out where everyone has to be and when. Everybody is waiting for you to screw up: the people above you, the people below you, and the people who knew you before and think they should be where you are. Nobody holds your hand.”
“I suppose it is like being a sergeant.” she murmured.
“The rule is: often wrong but never in doubt. That’s what makes you different. You show doubt, and nobody will follow you.”
“But what if you are in doubt?”
“Don’t let it show or you’re fucked.”
She sighed. “I’ll keep it in mind. You liked the military, Lord Bill. You keep mentioning it.”
“It was easy,” he told her.
“Why did you leave?”
“They sentenced me to death.”
What? “I’m sorry?”
William looked ahead. “I was court-martialed.”
What did he do? “Why?”
“A terrorist group had taken over a dam in the Weird. They took hostages and threatened to flood the town if their demands weren’t met.”
“What did they want?”
William grimaced. “Many things. In the end, they just wanted money. The rest of it was trying to dress themselves up as something other than robbers.”
“What happened?”
“The dam was very old, honeycombed with passageways. I was picked for the mission, because I don’t get lost easily and because they counted on me to do what I was told. The mission came with a strict set of orders: take out the terrorists, keep the dam from being destroyed. Keeping the dam intact had the highest priority.”
It sank in. “Higher than keeping the hostages alive?”
He nodded and fell silent.
“William?” she prompted softly.
“There was a boy,” he said quietly.
Oh no. “You let them blow up the dam to save a child.”
He nodded.
“And they sentenced you to death for it? What sort of people were these Weird bastards? Didn’t your family protest? Your mother should’ve been screaming at every politician she could find!”
He stared straight ahead, his expression bored and haughty, looking every inch a blueblood. “I don’t have a mother. Never knew her.”
All the fight went out of Cerise. “I’m so sorry. I guess Weird or Edge, women still die in childbirth.”
His chin rose another fraction of an inch. “She didn’t die. She gave me up.”
Cerise blinked. “She what?”
“She didn’t want me, so she surrendered me to the government.”
Cerise stared at him. “What do you mean, surrendered? But you were her son.”
“She was young and poor, and she didn’t want to raise me.” His voice was light, as if he were telling her their afternoon stroll was canceled due to the rain.
“What about your father?”
He shook his head.
“You grew up in an orphanage?”
“Something like that.”